Assignment #4 - color

Due Tuesday, March 10 (in class)

CS 48N - The Science of Art
Winter Quarter, 2009
Marc Levoy
Handout #8

Your fourth (and last!) assignment is to write a 3-4 page double-spaced paper on one of the topics listed in the first section below. Alternatively, you may do one of the projects listed in the second section. You may also choose another topic or project if you clear it with me in advance. The format and rules for this assignment are the same as in the first three.

If you did not present a project in class during a previous Student Day, then you must present during the remaining Student Day (March 10). You can present any of your four assignments, although I suggest presenting this assignment or the previous one.

Writing projects

• We considered many color spaces in class: one-dimensional (lines and circles), two-dimensional (the chromaticity diagram), and three-dimensional (pyramid, sphere, double cone, etc.). Many more are covered in chapter 6 of Kemp's book. What do you think is the best system to guide artists in the understanding and selection of colors? Defend your choice. Don't limit yourself to the systems you have read about. Can you think of a better one?
  
  
• In our coverage of the histories of light and shading, and of color, we neglected to treat the effects of changes in painting technology - in particular the switch from egg tempera to oil-based paint in the 15th century and the development of synthetic pigments in the 18th and 19th centuries. Working from Lamb and Bourriau's Colour: Art and Science (I have the book in my office), the appendicies in Baxandall's Shadows and Enlightenment, or other sources, trace this fascinating relationship between technology and art from the Renaissance through the 19th century.
  
  
• Write a paper on the use of color in an art medium we have not considered in class. Examples might be pottery, architecture, or tapestry. The latter is interesting because colors mix subtractively when the fibers are dyed, then additively when they are woven together.
  
  
• In the book The Eye of the Artist, Stanford Professor Michael Marmor discusses the art of famous artists who were known to have occular defects or diseases. In some cases, the defects are not known, but are instead inferred from the art. Choose one (or more) of these "more controversial" hypotheses and evaluate it (them) critically. Do you believe him? Defend your opinion. (I have the book in my office.)
  
  
• Write on the treatment of color in a non-Western-European culture. One angle might be to consider how universal are the emotions, symbols, and uses that different cultures associate with specific colors.
  
  
• Trace the scientific and artistic history of some optical theme that we did not cover in class, such as stereo, motion blur, or depth of field. If you choose stereo, don't forget to talk about its current resurgence in the movie industry. If you choose motion blur, don't forget to talk about its use in cartoon animation. If you choose depth of field, don't forget to talk about the invention of photography and its effect on our expectations about art.

Some non-writing projects

• Assemble and present in class some demonstrations of unusual modes of color mixing. Examples of additive mixing might include colored powders, adjacent strips or spots, or woven threads. Examples of subtractive mixing might include colored liquids or colored lights reflecting from colored surfaces.
  
  
• Reproduce Newton's Experimentum Crucis in which he splits light into a rainbow using a prism, recombines it, and splits it again. Alternatively, build a replica of the Young-Helmholz matching experiment, using prismatically produced primaries. This project would of course be great to demonstrate in class.
  
  
• Build a physical model of one of the three-dimensional color systems described in Kemp's book. Use any color reproduction medium you like to make the chips; a color ink-jet printer might work well.

For the projects listed above, your submission should include a brief textual explanation describing what you built and what it demonstrates, any problems you encountered building it, and what you would do differently next time.